Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Again, this post was really long, so it's
been split into two parts. Let's begin:

Everyone Believes They Are the Hero

Every living person believes they are
special. Every living person believes they are the hero. This is a fundamental
by-product of self awareness, an intrinsic part of being human. Your novel may
only have one protagonist, or it may have several. However if you want to write
realistic characters, you have to remember that every single character in the
novel, from the nameless guard to the queen to the villain, is the hero of
their own story.

The reason you choose your particular
protagonist for your particular story, should be because they are going to take
the reader on the most satisfying and intense emotional journey. Presumably
they stand the most to lose or gain, they are tied inescapably to the plot, and
they are an interesting, relatable character. And remember, if they aren't
relatable, they have to be very interesting (EG: Dexter in the Dexter series by
Jeff Lindsay). And if they're not very interesting, they have to be very
relatable (EG: Bella in the Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer).

Resonance & Archetypes

Resonance in writing is building on what
has come before to give a sense of familiarity to the reader. This doesn't
refer to what has come before you in your novel, rather what has come before in
human history and the culture you are writing for.

If I talk about beautiful elves and
dwarves living in mountains and orcs and trolls being the bad guys, you're
going to think 'Tolkien'. However Tolkien was already using a lot of resonance
in his writing, referring to earlier mythology and stories. Likewise, there
have been thousands of authors who followed Tolkien, borrowing from the world
he created to write new worlds that still resonated with the same ideas.

Resonance is powerful, because it allows
us to draw on the emotions those previous works created. If you feel excited
and awed when you think of Lord of the Rings and the cover or synopsis of a new
book remind s you of Lord of the Rings, some of that excitement and awe will
resurface too.

The same goes for characters and
character archetypes. At different stages of our lives, we all have archetypes
we are drawn to, even if we are not consciously aware of it. Go and get the
last twenty books you read. Make a note of the protagonist's age, gender and a
few personality traits. Is something popping up again and again?

You probably prefer an archetype that is
your gender and age when it comes to protagonists. And you might have a type of
secondary character you love too. Personally I am drawn to intelligent, serious
and often cold characters who are neat, organised and precise. They are not
jokers. They are not messy or unorganised. They often have a strict, inflexible
moral code which may or may not be aligned with the people around them. I wish
this archetype was more popular than it is. It crops up quite regularly in
anime, but infrequently in books.

Your hero should match your target
audience. And it's not a bad idea for them to resonate with other popular
characters with the same target audience. Your character should also tend
toward morality--or rather, their morality needs to be consistent. Or shown to
develop and change as the plot progresses, driven by the events of the plot.

A hero who is against killing and actively
wants to help people, but who then kills some nameless guards without feeling
guilty or being otherwise affected, is an inconsistent character and their
morals and actions don't match.

Agency

Character agency is a term that is thrown
around a lot, but someone hasn’t explained it to you, it can be a bit tricky to
figure out. Simply put, a character with agency is taking action, instead of
reacting. They aren’t just a passenger, accepting what happens to them. They
are doing things to help or escape or somehow get ahead of the problems they
are facing.

Let’s say your heroine has been kidnapped
and locked in a cell. Does she wait for someone to rescue her? Cry? Tremble in
fear? Or does she come up with an escape plan. Does she do everything possible
to get herself out, including trying to dig an escape route or attacking her
captor or at least throwing a handful of shit in his face when he brings her
food?

Characters with agency TAKE ACTION, they
do not simply REACT after things are done to them.

Generally speaking, readers prefer
characters with agency. No one wants to read about the sort of loser that just
sits there letting things happen, never taking initiative. If Katniss hadn’t
taken initiative in The Hunger Games, her sister would have gone to the games
instead, died and the book would have been about Katniss slowly working herself
to death, slowly giving up, watching every year as more children went to die in
the same way her sister did. It probably wouldn’t have been a best seller.

Back to the Profile

In the second blog post in this series, I
talked about profiles. Your hero profile is very important, because it keeps
track of your hero's motives and goals, strengths, weaknesses, interests,
morality and relationships. It helps you keep them consistent and it helps you
end up with the kind of character you planned to write.

Your characters should have something
they want from the very first page. It should be something they want
desperately. This motive may be maintained through the novel or may change as
they develop. However starting with a need which the characters are willing to
make sacrifices for is important.

Your character should be a well rounded
person with interests. Have you ever met someone who has a boring job and no
hobbies and talking to them is like pulling teeth? No one wants to read about a
character like that anymore than they want to talk to them. Your character
doesn't have to be skilled at their interests. Maybe they like painting, but
they suck at it. Maybe they love football, but they're in a wheelchair and
can't play. Maybe they grew up in a cell devoid of human contact, but they
collect and breed cockroaches.

That said, you should be careful that
your hero isn't just the person you wish you were. It's good to share some
interests with your character--if you know a lot about horse riding it will be
easier to write a character who loves horses. But if your character is good at
all the things you wish you were good at and has all the things you wish you had,
you're not writing for an audience. You're just daydreaming.

Lastly, remember what I said about
strengths and weaknesses: Every trait a person can have can be good or bad. Any
strength you think you have can also be a weakness. Any weakness you have can
also be a strength. What is leadership in one, is bossiness in another. What is
loud and brash to one, is enthusiasm to another. What is compassionate to one,
is soft-hearted and weak to another.

So when you are giving your character
strengths and weaknesses, make them the same thing. Fun loving, but
irresponsible. A good leader, but bossy. A skilled fighter, but aggressive.
Intelligent, but impractical.

Your goal with a well written hero is
often to slowly turn these negatives into their positive, rather than reversing
them completely.

NEXT
WEEK - Part 10. Characters: Heroes - Part 2

The previous parts of the character development blog series can be found here:

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Stakes and conflicts need to
raise through your story. Whatever problem and stakes you start with, need to
get worse and worse, more and more desperate. And you should have a good idea
of how this is going to happen before you begin writing.

One of the ways it will rise is
your character’s own emotional investment. It’s the core of romances, the
stakes raise as the characters fall more and more in love with each other,
their emotional investment rises. Likewise, if your hero is a gruff, uncaring,
world-weary cowboy, he will undoubtedly meet someone weaker and more vulnerable
that he will protect, grudgingly at first, but who will then become a driving
motivation as the story progresses.

Another typical way for the
stakes it rise is that on your characters first (then often second and even
third) effort to solve their problems, they fail. A character who always
effortlessly succeeds is boring. No one can empathise with a flawless character,
because none of us are flawless. Seeing their failure, their reaction to it,
the way they fight to keep going, or maybe give up for a time, allows us to see
who they are. And the higher their highs and the lower their lows, the more of
them we see.

A character who has no emotional
investment, or who doesn’t react to things, internally or externally, is not
interesting to a reader. However if a reader can feel with the character,
empathise as completely as you can manage, then they will remember that story
and want to share it with everyone else.

Conflict Resolution

You have to resolve all the
conflicts in your story in a way that will satisfy the reader. That is not to
say they have to be happy endings, or the ending that the reader wants, but
they do have to be resolved. EG: Let’s say in the middle of the book, the main
character has to abandon hisbeloved dog
on the roof of a house in flood waters. He promises to go back for her. She’s
barking as he paddles away and he orders her to stay with tears rolling down
her face.

At some point in the book, even
if it is toward the very end, you have to resolve that conflict. Maybe the dog
is rescued by someone else, maybe he goes back for it, maybe he sees fly over
footage of the site and sees the dog is dead. However the reader needs to know
what happened to it, one way or another.

Loose ends leave readers feeling
uncomfortable. If people are uncomfortable, if they leave your book feeling
unsatisfied, they won’t come back and read your next book. So if you are leaving
things unresolved, only do so if you have a really good reason, if that is your
intention that readers feel that way.

Ultimately, you want to resolve
your novel in a way that leaves them with a strong emotion—you decide what that
emotion is, as the writer, but you want it to be intense. You want it to have
as much impact as you can possibly deliver. With happy endings, you may then
end with a mellower scene, something short to show everything has calmed down, or
that adventures are ongoing, or that everything is back to normal, but this palette
cleanser can’t be too long. It’s a reassurance—don’t let it drag on so long
that it weakens your final emotional impact.

NEXT WEEK - Part 9. Characters: Heroes.

The previous parts of the character development blog series can be found here:

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About Me

Born in 1985, Talitha is a geeky Australian writer who spends an unhealthy amount of time reading and watching horror movies. She also loves fresh water shrimps and snakes, and lives in a house dominated by various tanks housing both. She advises that shrimps are the best companions for writers; as they always look like they are typing. Snakes, on the other hand, simply knock everything off your desk—including keyboards, mugs, entire computers and shrimp tanks.
Talitha’s other interests include entomology, rock climbing, reading, web design, photography and video gaming.